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Internship Application and Guidelines

General Information:

This American Life is a weekly, nationally-distributed public radio program featuring documentaries, interviews and short stories. The show is produced at Chicago Public Radio in downtown Chicago by a full-time staff of four producers, an executive producer, an administrator and an intern.

This American Life is pleased to offer three internships a year. Although there are no specific application criteria, most interns in the past have been undergraduate students or people recently out of school.

Internships run for four month periods.

The internship program is designed to give an introduction to almost every facet of producing This American Life – from copyediting to technical production to administrative duties. The interns start off observing the weekly production of the show by sitting in on meetings and edits with producers while learning basic production skills. Interns will first learn digital tape editing by producing promos and short interviews. They will review unsolicited submissions, transcribe tape, learn to structure a radio story and learn to mix a radio story, plus performing assorted menial administrative tasks that are true signs of an internship. Interns participate in all story meetings and are encouraged to pitch story ideas and comment on future shows. By the end of the program, interns are encouraged to produce their own pieces, including editing and mixing voice, sound and music. The diversity of tasks depends largely on initiative and self-motivation.

Stipend

Interns are provided a monthly stipend of $2000, before taxes. Unfortunately we are unable to provide aid in terms of housing, however past interns have been able to find partially furnished rooms for $300-$400 a month. We are committed to providing a stipend because the work hours are fairly long. We feed the show on Friday nights at 7 p.m. Central time every week, so as we get closer to the end of the week, the hours become longer. A typical work week varies between 50-60 hours. As a result, it is expected that this be the intern’s only job during the four-month term. We already have chosen an intern for all the remaining 2004 terms. The next open terms are as follows:

Terms

Winter 2005 term: January 1, 2005 through April 31, 2005. Application deadline: October 1, 2004 Decison:by November 1, 2004.

Summer 2005 term: May 1, 2005 through August 31, 2005. Application deadline February 1, 2005; decision by the end of March 1, 2005.

Fall 2005 term:September 1, 2005 through December 31, 2005. Application deadline June 1, 2005; decision by July 1, 2005.

How To Apply

To apply for the internship program, send a cover letter, in the form of a personal statement of no more than 500 words, explaining why you should be selected to take part in the intership program and letting us know something about yourself and your interest in radio. You should include a resume and the names and phone numbers of at least two references whom we may contact. We ask that you also answer the questions below. Resumes and cover letters will not be acknowledged unless they come with a completed questionnaire. Interviews for finalists will be set up after the above materials are received.

Return answers to the following questions with your resume and cover letter to:

Internship: Fall, Winter or Summer (please indicate which term)
This American Life
WBEZ Radio
848 E. Grand Ave
Chicago, IL 60611

DO NOT EMAIL YOUR APPLICATIONS; WE WILL NOT ACCEPT THEM. ALSO, PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE TAL WEBSITE OR OUR OFFICES CONCERNING YOUR APPLICATION.

We will notify all applicants of the decision by the deadlines listed above.

You can be brief with your responses – the point of the exercise is both to get an idea of the kind of thinking and work that go into the internship while also allowing the staff to get to know you a little better.

Internship application questions:

Briefly describe any of your previous radio, documentary journalism or writing experiences.

Write about three of your favorite This American Life shows or pieces and briefly explain why.

Write about three shows or pieces that did not work quite as well and explain why.

Suggest a small documentary/reporter piece for This American Life. Please explain the story as a whole, along with possible characters and scenes that could be developed. This probably sounds harder then it actually is. We're not looking for Pulitzer Prize war stories or anything like that, but rather stories that you have some personal stake in or that you find genuinely interesting, no matter how small they are. Imagine that you're telling the story to a friend and that you need to keep them entertained so that they don't get bored and their eyes don't start to glaze over. And the more detailed you can get the better.

Suggest two or three possible show themes. In a paragraph, explain how each theme could be explored. Feel free to include examples of specific stories that could fit each theme.

What is your familiarity with computers, recording equipment, and analog or digital editing? Have you ever worked with an editing program called Pro Tools? If not, have you worked with other editing programs? Have you ever transcribed tape?

Briefly describe any research experience you may have had.

Educate

You'll find brief descriptions, sent in by teachers all over the country, of how they're using TAL with their students. Click here for descriptions......

You also may want to check out our comic book, Radio: An Illustrated Guide, which shows readers, step-by-step, how to craft a radio story in the style of This American Life. The comics are available at a discount for educational use.

Please don't hesitate to email us if you have suggestions on what we can to to encourage and support educational use of This American Life. We're excited about the possibilities.

Submit A Story

Before you get started

We highly recommend the"Tools" section on Transom.org; there, you'll find a wealth of material to get you started, especially if you're new to radio.

We also strongly suggest you follow-up by reading former intern and now-contributor Hillary Frank's essay, "How to Get on This American Life."

This American Life broadcasts fiction and non-fiction, monologues and documentaries. If something has appeared in print or on the radio elsewhere, it can still appear on This American Life. We also commission original reporting and original fiction.

We broadcast poetry, but that's rare. We also do an occasional radio drama, but if anything, that's even rarer. We find that it's hard to do poetry or drama on the radio without sounding corny.

If you're a reporter with a story to pitch, include some samples of your work with your pitch letter.

What makes the show different from most other programs on public radio is that the stories we broadcast tend to have a very strong narrative. These are stories about a character or characters who are thrown into situations that shed light on something larger. The stories are constructed as a series of scenes or anecdotes (unlike most radio reporting). Often the characters change over the course of the story. Sometimes the entire story involves a writer or reporter (or character) going into situations to try to figure out the answer to some question.

An illustration of how This American Life is different from other radio shows:

During the 1996 Presidential elections, All Things Considered did many reports on the disagreements within the Republican party. These were standard news stories: we heard quotes from moderate and right wingers of various types. Experts weighed in.

This American Life broadcast Dan Savage's first person account of how he--a life-long Democrat--decided that the best way to combat the extreme right wing of the Republican Party would be to join the Republican Party himself. His story detailed scene after scene of what happened at Party meetings in Seattle. The scenes were funny, surprising, and took us deep inside a world most of us know only in the most superficial way. Dan is gay, and a number of moderate Republicans pulled him aside to tell him that homophobia and intolerance are just gimmicks the Party uses to mobilize the rank and file, but that really, deep down, the Republican Party has nothing against homosexuals. So Dan started introducing gay rights resolutions. These were voted down by huge margins.

In contrast to the All Things Considered news accounts, Dan's story was a drama, a narrative of one person who goes on a quest. There was a natural conflict: gay liberal among the conservatives. It shed light on much larger themes: the direction of the Republican Party, the way Party members see themselves and their political involvement.

Stories We Reject

The material we most often reject is writing that lacks a narrative. A lot of it is good, vivid writing, but without a real story to it. Often it's recollections about some person the writer knew, or some time in their own lives. Often there are interesting anecdotes, but without any driving question, or real conflict. There's nothing bigger at issue and nothing surprising revealed. In many of these stories, the characters are all the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning. No one learns anything. No one changes.

Sometimes people send us "commentaries" like you hear on Morning Edition or All Things Considered. These tend to be brief essays, without real scenes or characters. We don't usually run material like that.

Stories We Accept

The stories that fit most easily into This American Life are accounts of people who had some experience that changed them, or accounts of an incident that illustrated some broader idea. It's best if these are surprising, if they run counter to what we might expect.

We also like found texts and tapes: found letters, old recordings from people's attics or from thrift stores. We've done a number of shows with material like this. Again, these work best when the materials tell a story or illustrate some larger theme or idea.

What we ARE looking for:

Work that surprises.

Work that's funny. Especially work that's both funny and sad.

Writing that works like journalism-- even if it's fiction. That is, it describes and documents real things that happen to people.

Stories on This American Life are usually six to twelve minutes long, though we've been known to go as long as an hour on one story and as short as a minute and a half. Don't worry much about length. If we like something, we make the time. If we like it and think it should be shorter, we discuss that with you.

How to Format your Submission

Printed copy (does NOT need to be accompanied by audio – a printout of your story or script is sufficient)

CD (must be accompanied by a transcript/script)

DAT (must be accompanied by a transcript/script)

Audiocassette (must be accompanied by a transcript/script)

We do not accept submissions on minidisc, or micro or mini cassettes.

If you have a story pitch – meaning that you have an idea for a documentary story that you'd like to report yourself or have us report – you can email those pitches to storypitch@thislife.org.

If you have a written story or essay or produced documentary or interview, send your material to:

Submissions
This American Life
WBEZ
848 E. Grand Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611

We take a horrendously long time to acknowledge and respond to submissions – sometimes up to six months. Please be patient, and don't email the web staff; they are unable to track status.